Designer / Fall 2011 RTW

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Last November, around Thanksgiving, Vogue took a trip to China, visiting Beijing and Shanghai. Women voracious in their love of coolly conceptual fashion were engaged in conversation, including one who casually spent $1.5 million a year on clothes, wearing most things only once (maybe there is no word in Mandarin for “recession”). Actresses, many of whom had fantastic personal style, were familiar with everyone from Altuzarra to Rodarte. Even the youngest fashion students, just like any kid going to Parsons, were engaged in what was subculturally hot, access to the Internet permitting. The common theme? Their love of Chinese, or Chinese-American designers, Phillip Lim included.

This is what to keep in mind when you go look at Lim’s show, where his fall collection’s girl-on-a-cycle theme translated into draped flyaway jackets, roomy patched and paneled coats (along with anything utility, the look of next winter), and the tapered, ever-so-slightly cropped pants with the tricked-out volume that clocked in many, many runway miles this past week: This is a guy with a global business, one that when China really gets behind him is going to become even more massive. Lim has the knack of zeroing in on the most current fashion gestures—note the use of slicked patent for a dress layered under an earthy cardigan coat, which nods to the growing appearance of fetish gloss—yet all the while making it feel like they could have a more universal appeal. And when you’re taking on the world, well, that’s pretty darn handy.